Explosive claims that MH370 should never have taken off because Malaysia Airlines broke its own rules

Why was the doomed plane was not able to report its position more often?

BY SAM WEBB

2nd October 2016, 5:25 pm

Updated: 3rd October 2016, 1:45 pm

Malaysia Airlines did not follow rules for tracking the location of lost Flight MH370 - and should never have been allowed to fly - according to revelations in a book about air disasters.

Reporter Christine Negroni questions why the doomed plane was not able to report its position and status more often than every half an hour in her new book, The Crash Detectives.

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A piece of debris from the doomed flight

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The reporter claims Malaysia Airlines knew it was breaking the rules. File picture

She wrote that a year before the flight seemingly vanished in April 2013, the airline's auditors discovered that the airline was not complying with its own rules for sending information from its planes to its HQ by satellite.

The major airline was required to track its passenger jets "throughout all phases of the flight to ensure that the flight is following its prescribed route, without unplanned deviation, diversion or delay."

And the investigators pointed out that this lapse is severe the airliner should not have been cleared to fly.

Negroni also claims that the acting transport minister at the time, Hishammuddin Hussein, knew about the audit but never revealed it, even after repeated questions about why the plane's situation and location were not logged more often.

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A total of 239 people vanished

"The airline was informed by its own staff that it was unable to comply with tracking regulations," Negroni told the Daily Beast.

"So Malaysia knew it was deficient and did nothing."

Malaysia Airlines' long haul flights now send tracking information far more frequently - once every five minutes.

Mystery has surrounded the disappearance of the Boeing 777 which vanished in March 2014, while flying to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur with 239 people on board.

In July, officials Australia, Malaysia and China, announced they were winding down the search.